Ambiguous Link Treatments that Can Make the Link’s Weight Confusing

General Tips for the Treatment of Links

Opening links in a new browser window appears to be universally hated, so don’t do this. Just use a normal link and let users decide how to open it using their browser controls.

If you can, add a “title” attribute to your link tag with information to help users determine the weight of the link.

Consider making both a “real” link and a javascript “expand” link available, labeling both clearly using the techniques suggested above

I’m not sure where lightboxes come into play in all of this. Since they are not very common and thus not to be expected, they should probably be delineated with a link.

In general, I think most users expect links to be “real” links, so if it’s not a real link – if it’s an in-place expansion, lightbox, or something else, mark those links as being special, and leave “real” links plain.

If you must pop open a new browser window or pop up, the following types of icons are probably good to use to signal this:

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About Máirín Duffy

Máirín is a principal interaction designer at Red Hat. She is passionate about software freedom and free & open source tools, particularly in the creative domain: her favorite application is Inkscape. You can read more from Máirín on her blog at blog.linuxgrrl.com.